The history of the Kassel Elementary School Workshop begins when Ariane Garlichs takes up the professorship for educational science with a focus on elementary school pedagogy at the Gesamthochschule Kassel in 1972. Trips with students to England, Sweden, Denmark, France and Holland were the reason and motivation for planning an elementary school pedagogy laboratory. Ariane Garlichs and her students wanted to show how open education and the university as a learning environment should be designed. From 1975, the so-called elementary school room existed, room 1415 in the AVZ in the Oberzwehren district of Kassel. This room was 48 square meters in size. Its furnishings were inspired by the room and classroom design at schools in England, Holland and Denmark.
Although the primary school room at the AVZ was primarily designed as a place for students to learn and be educated, children were also frequent guests. Learning situations were designed and tested with the children, and students were given opportunities to actively accompany children at the university.
In the following years, Ariane Garlichs campaigned for the establishment of an elementary school pedagogy laboratory (with space, personnel and material resources). The first planning sketches were submitted as early as 1980, and in 1981 a seminar was held by Kassel teacher training students and students from the Stuttgart School Construction Institute. The students dealt with spatial planning and worked out drafts for the interior design of the planned pedagogical laboratory.
However, the spatial realization of the elementary school pedagogical laboratory took 12 years, until the move from the AVZ to Holländischer Platz. Then, however, suitable rooms that could be seen and accessed from the street were available, and an excellent designer was found in Dr. Herbert Hagstedt, who began his work as managing director of the primary school workshop in January 1983. Parallel to his arrival, the IAG (Interdisciplinary Working Group on Elementary School Pedagogy) was founded, whereby the work within the framework of the Elementary School Workshop was henceforth coupled with research and development tasks.
After the retirement of Ariane Garlichs, in 2003 Friederike Heinzel took over the professorship for educational science with a focus on elementary school pedagogy, the management of the Elementary School Workshop and the task of carrying out research and development tasks within the framework of the Elementary School Workshop, with a content-related focus on the connection of childhood and elementary school research. Concepts were developed to attract as many elementary school teaching students as possible from the University of Kassel to the Elementary School Workshop on a regular basis and to introduce them to case-based and research-based learning. As part of an introductory module, for example, all students of elementary school teaching at the University of Kassel get to know the Elementary School Workshop. The elementary school workshop was also further developed as a cultural learning space for educationally disadvantaged children by expanding sponsorship projects and service learning.
Three designations have been used in the history of the Elementary School Workshop. For better understanding:
Grundschulraum was the name given to the place in the AVZ.
Grundschulwerkstatt has come to be called the place at Holländischer Platz.
And the term elementary school pedagogical laboratory refers to the content-related concept that the initiators wanted to realize. Their intention was to create an experimental experience and research space for teacher training in the elementary school sector. For them, this also included inviting children and their teachers to the elementary school workshop in order to implement didactic concepts with children on an experimental basis.
The primary education laboratory did not and does not want to be a technological learning workshop in which teachers train teaching concepts. Rather, from the very beginning, the aim has been to increase the potential for imagination on the part of teachers. To this end, teachers themselves were also involved in searching learning processes. Both the spatial concept and the targeted selection of the university didactic arrangements and the teaching and learning materials are related to this.
For many learning workshops at universities, at schools and in teacher training, the elementary school workshop in Kassel was a model and people traveled to Kassel to get ideas for their own workshop. The elementary school pedagogical laboratory saw itself as a support for school development in the region.
Herbert Hagstedt has repeatedly emphasized that learning workshops cannot be standardized, but are learning landscapes that have to be invented. He named 10 essential points of the "performance profile" of learning workshops (Hagstedt 1998). They should be an exchange of ideas, provide spatial impulses, show material alternatives, contribute to finding personal questions, enable trial actions, offer learning support, open up multi-perspectivity, provide offers for different learning types, open up biographical identification with reform work and promote "doubt culture" in the sense of a reflexive distance to everyday school life.
Since March 2012, Dr. Ralf Schneider has been responsible for the Grundschulwerkstatt as its managing director. Under his care, the Elementary School Workshop was remodeled and modernized. This remodeling was made possible by funds raised from the professorship in the course of lead negotiations. The rooms have become even brighter, warmer and more accessible. Ralf Schneider has developed active contact with various elementary schools in the region and supports school development projects in the region with students.
The current work of the primary school workshop comprises three pillars: it sees itself as a research workshop, a learning workshop and a development workshop. The contribution and impulse of the learning workshop for students and teaching is seen in the combination of learning practice, learning theory and learning biography.
